10 Things they don’t teach you in University and should

1-Setting goals and pursuing them

In University the only real goals you set up are related to your grades, to pass that course, or to have that kind of average at the end of your “studies”. Which are somewhat easy to pursue, you either work harder or study more. So what about setting real life goals, how do you pursue them, where the hell do you START? We can recommend starting with this book “Think and grow rich” by Napoleon Hill, it’s a good place to start.

2-SELL SELL SELL

When I was in university, nobody taught me how to sell, everything was always oriented to fictitious numbers, like wow I just sold 200k€ of this product, look at how easy that was, then you come out of school and you’re faced with the need to sell, either is yourself when you go for a job interview, or selling an idea or a product to an Investor or your boss, not mentioning getting one point up in the very competitive market of the big corporate world. Some say selling is an art, personally I see it more as a sport, where practicing makes perfection. Selling is the most important job in any organization. Check out this video by Alec Baldwin on Selling.

3-Working with people from different disciplines

You got into college and everything is perfect, you study hard, you get good grades, you do group assignments with your fellow peers and everything goes well. You get out and you start working, all of the sudden you are faced with a whole new environment, no everybody studied the same as you, people have different skills, different backgrounds and different ways of viewing the world. Now what? Well you have 2 different options, you complain because in school you were never encouraged to work with people from other courses, or you get your shit together and you learn to leverage those skills and achieving much more.

4-Building a network

There is this old quote that says something like this, “You can see a persons value by the books they read and the people they hang out with.” Start building you network as soon as possible. When you get out of college, the more well connected you are, the better chances you have to thrive, because since you know a lot of people, you can easily move yourself around and get what you want. Start going to events of your field of expertise, join casual gatherings, frequent the same places that the person you want to meet does (please don’t stalk people, you can get arrested for that). Check out Meetup.com

5- Building a proper portfolio, do something, anything really

Look at the advice that Shia LaBeouf gives when asked about how to be an actor just like him. http://youtu.be/nRjXV5Lry9I?t=21m8s Start doing something, anything really, you don’t become good by studying all the time or thinking about stuff, you become good by doing, it’s the only way. That leads me to the next point…

6- Encouraging working while studying

In college you are encouraged to study as much as you can, what they don’t tell you is that by not working during your degree you lose your competitive advantage to the ones that did. Go the extra mile and get a part time job, I know I know you need to study for your finals, ok, get a summer internship, work for free if they can’t afford you, get some experience. When you finish your degree, you’ll be ahead of your fellow peers.

7- Start with the Why

Why did you choose to that degree? Many students fail to think about it before they applying to university, they do their course, get a job and start working, all of the sudden 3 years have passed and they find themselves clueless, not knowing how the hell they ended up there, working on a field they don’t really like. Simon Sinek put’s it very well on his famous Ted Talk. Check it out:

8- How to handle failure and how is that good for you

Societies aren’t built upon achievements, they are built upon the constant failure of things and that is how you improve and get better, by constantly experimenting. Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times before perfecting the incandescent electric light bulb. Don’t worry if you fail, learn from your mistake and start again.

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” -Albert Einstein

9-Job Searching, it’s not about sending CV’s

A lot of friends of mine come to me desperate that they can’t find a job, nobody gives them an opportunity, they get rejected all the time, then I proceed to ask them to show me what they are doing, and usually they are making the same mistake, they made a sport out of sending CV’s. In school they just tell you, get really good grades and you’ll find a job, companies will fall at your feet, they bombard us with statistics like “oh, we have a 95% employment rate”, bla bla bla. Maybe you’ll get an internship, but most likely the first job you’ll get is not going to last forever right? So what do you do next? Have you tried to be different? Have you tried to do a study on a company you are applying for? What they are doing well and not so well? What their competitors are doing better and how YOU can improve that? Keep in mind that applying for a position in a small company is totally different then applying for a big corporate company, they have different needs. Go the extra mile, I know it’s a lot of work for no pay, but do you have anything else better to do?

10-How to be happy

And for last, how to be happy, which is the most important thing, be happy with what you do and who you are, and for that I simply recommend you to read Dalai Lama’s book “The art of Happiness”.